Hearts of Glass
by paganpunk2
Summary: Dick feels that he's no good as Robin after allowing a criminal to escape during a mission. Fluff and words of wisdom ensue to make him feel better, and to help Bruce realize something in turn. Slight language.
1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note: This is just a short little piece that was inspired by a quote from Ira Glass (the quote will be used in the second chapter, so I won't share it here). This story isn't officially part of my Spark in the Dark series, although if you'd like to read it as such you're certainly welcome to. I plan to post the second chapter tomorrow. Happy reading!**

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His boots dragging slightly, Dick trudged from the car to the back corner of the cave where their costumes were kept. He'd shed his mask in the vehicle, tearing it off with a little hiss the instant they had entered the long tunnel that marked the beginning of safety. For the rest of the ride he had clutched it tightly in one hand, his expression downcast as he stared out of the side window at the age-old strata flashing by.

Batman hadn't said anything about his early unmasking. In fact, he hadn't said anything at all since they'd reconvened following the botched takedown, and that was part of what was bothering the boy. _…He could at least go ahead and yell at me,_ he fought back tears as he laid his domino carefully in its assigned drawer, straightening it before he gently slid it out of view. _I know I messed up, and I know I could have done better. I know he's…he's mad at me. He researched these guys for two weeks, and then I let the most important one get away._ He sniffled as silently as he could. _…He'll probably never let me out on patrol again. What good is a partner who lets the bad guys escape?_

"Robin," was breathed low from just behind him. He shuffled around to face the speaker reluctantly, keeping his head bowed in shame.

"…Yes, Batman?" his voice trembled slightly. _Please. Please, yell at me all you want, just…just don't sound disappointed. I __hate__ it when you sound disappointed…_

"Explain what happened this evening." He already knew, of course, but he wanted the child to figure out for himself what the problem had been. _He'll never learn to self-correct if he can't pick up on his own mistakes. This is an important lesson,_ he reminded himself as a pair of tears suddenly glistened on the flushed cheeks in front of him. _…Even if it is a cruel one for someone as sensitive as he is._

"I…I'm sorry," he murmured, hands balling at his sides as his lower lip tucked itself between his teeth.

"…That doesn't answer the question," he pointed out in a voice that almost had a soft edge to it.

"I ruined it," Dick whispered, his face now all but parallel to the ground. "You did all that work to find Standish, and I…I let him slip away." _Don't cry. Don't cry, it will only make it worse. I already let him down once today, if I cry in costume he'll just feel like I'm even __more__ of a failure…_ It was a Herculean task for the ten-year-old to restrain his sobs, but he managed it through sheer force of will. _I don't want to be a failure, Bruce. I want…I want to be like you._

"…Correct. Go change and think about what you could have done better." _Go quickly, before you can't control yourself any more,_ the caped man recognized the huge amounts of effort that were being put into avoiding a total breakdown. _I don't want to see that. It will only make me want to hit people, and there's no one around to serve as a punching bag. Training equipment just doesn't serve, not when Robin pouts._

"…Okay," he nodded, then moved away towards the showers. _I don't want to take my uniform off, though,_ he protested miserably to himself. _I'm too afraid that you won't let me put it on again…_

Batman watched him go, then grimaced as the emergency line rang. _Damn it, Gordon, I've been out of the city for thirty minutes, and you're calling already? Why do you even __have__ police officers if they can't manage for half an hour without me?_ "…What?" Two minutes passed as he listened to the harried request on the other end of the line. "Mm. Fine. I'm on my way." With that, he hung up and turned to follow Dick. _This isn't the time for this, not when there's coaching to be done, but…I'll talk to him in the morning. No one will die if we push our discussion off for a few hours; the situation in town, on the other hand, requires immediate attention._ "…I'm leaving," he announced when he spotted the half-changed boy.

His tunic lay on the floor and his arms were held out in front of him by his partially-on pajama shirt, but he whipped around anyway, eyes wide and wet. "…Leaving?"

"The Commissioner called," was explained brusquely.

"Do…do you want…I mean, I could…" he trailed off hopefully. _If he takes me with him, I'll know he's not all that upset, after all. I know I did everything all wrong, but…maybe he'll forgive me?_

"No. Go to bed. And keep thinking about what happened earlier."

_…Oh. So he __is__ mad. Well, I guess I should have known that,_ Dick sighed to himself when he was alone again. _I mean…it's Batman. Forgiveness isn't exactly his M.O._ Out in the main cave, the Batmobile door slammed. A minute later the child that had been left behind shucked off the last piece of his costume, dropped it onto the pile, and then sat heavily on a bench and buried his face in his hands. _…He's __never__ gonna let me back out with him,_ he just knew, the certainty repeating itself in his head as he finally let his tears come.

It had started as a complex case with a simple-sounding endgame. Batman had been tracking a ring of human traffickers for weeks, but they were clever, never using the same location twice and shuffling different kidnappers in and out of the city so frequently that it was difficult to hunt them down for interrogation. It had frustrated the man to no end, particularly as more victims vanished from the streets every day. When people started being taken from secured buildings and other locations where they should have been safe from such things, Bruce had laid down the law, forbidding Dick to leave the house without the direct supervision or either himself or Alfred. Even just playing outside was verboten; while the Manor was almost as extensively protected as the cave was, he wasn't taking any chances.

Then, completely out of the blue, there had been a breakthrough. A mid-week patrol had included a confrontation with two petty thieves enacting a mugging on an elderly woman. She had been frightened, as was to be expected, but whereas most muggees would have feared the gun in the crooks' hands her concern was a bit broader. "You aren't going to take me away to sell, are you?" she'd asked, her voice shaking wildly as the unarmed hood rifled through her purse.

Behind the dumpster he'd been preparing to charge out from, Batman had paused, listening. Magic words passed from the lips of one of the criminals after a moment of silence: "Nah. You're way older than the ones we usually take. You wouldn't be worth anything." Smirking mirthlessly as he heard exactly what he'd been hoping to, the black-clad man came around and flattened the pair. After sending the now terrified citizen on her way, he'd gone about the process of scaring information from the less unconscious of the thugs.

That interview had resulted in tonight. A large load of girls destined for the sex trade were supposed to leave town, and with their advanced notice there was a chance that Batman and Robin could save them. Equally as important, there was a rumor going around that the big boss, the man responsible for organizing the underground auctions at which his hostages were sold, would be present to inspect the merchandise prior to shipping. There was no way that such an opportunity could be passed up, and the crime fighters had stepped out with every reason to believe that they would be successful that evening.

Everything was going beautifully until the duo split up at a T in the secret corridors below a world-renowned restaurant. They'd already flattened several guards, one of whom had confirmed that yes, the man they were looking for was present somewhere deeper in the warren of hidden rooms. The goal was self-evident; get the ringleader and save those who had been ripped from their homes. When Robin peeked around a corner to find not only the man whose face his mentor had made him memorize but also ten women, bound together two-by-two and all wearing petrified looks, a wildcat grin had slipped across his lips. _Perfect._

He stepped out to find three gun barrels leveled on him. Just as he leapt away, Standish screamed for his security detail not to shoot, fearing that the sale price of a woman bearing a fresh bullet wound would be lower than he wanted. Foolishly, the men obeyed, and in less than a minute all three had fallen under the boy's hit-and-fly blows. _Your turn, you creep,_ he'd thought as he turned his attention to the focus of the raid.

The trafficker had been paying attention to what the goons of Gotham had had to say in recent months about the brightly colored vigilante who swiveled to face him as the last gunman thudded to the floor. Robin was tough, but he was more compassionate than Batman had ever dreamt of being, and finding himself cornered only by the former Standish concocted a speedy plan. Gambling on the idea that the boy would stop to give aid to a dying hostage before chasing after him, the man shoved his hand out to the side and struck one of the girls in the throat with as much strength as he could muster. Her windpipe half-crushed by the blow, she fell to her knees and began to choke. Knowing his cue when he heard it, Standish fled through the only door in the room that he didn't have to go through Robin to get to.

Faced with a dilemma that his training hadn't prepared him for, the youth hesitated for an instant. _He'll get away if I don't go after him…but she can't breathe. If I take care of him first, she could be dead by the time I get back, and Batman's…who knows where Batman is, this is a big place. We can find him again if we have to, but…she'd already been through a lot. I don't want him to escape, but I want her to die even less._ Decision made, he moved to where the wild-eyed slave was clawing at her bruised skin. _…I don't know, this looks bad…maybe if she lays down, like on her side?_ "Here," he tried to guide her to the floor. She resisted at first, clearly frightened of his intentions despite the fact that he was obviously a child, but when the woman she was chained to began insisting as well she obeyed. Slowly, her breathing calmed, still ragged and strained but less desperate than it had been. "Just…just keep her like that. Someone will come to help, okay?"

With that, he leapt back to his feet and followed the outlaw through the second door. The space beyond was a narrow staircase that led upwards and featured another portal at the top. Dashing through, he found himself in a back parking lot surrounded by a high fence. He was just in time to see a pair of taillights, the vehicle they were attached to unidentifiable in the darkness, turn onto the street and speed away. _…Crap!_

Even if he grappled up to the nearest rooftop and began to give chase, he knew there was no way he would be able to catch them. Provided that he was even able to keep up, without knowing what the car looked like he wouldn't be able to identify it from above, and he'd have to move out of sight of it frequently in order to cross the buildings. _…I lost him. He got away. "_Batman," he flicked on his radio.

"…Report."

"I found ten hostages with three guards and Standish. The guards are unconscious, and Standish hurt one of the prisoners. I chased him, but…I'm going back to them now, to tie up the ones I knocked out."

There was a moment of silence, and Robin knew that the elder vigilante was processing the very obvious gap in his relaying of events. _He knows I let Standish escape. But…I didn't have a choice,_ his thoughts turned confused and pleading as grim disappointment transmitted itself through the airwaves. Now, with his decision being called into wordless question by his mentor, he felt far less certain that he'd done what he should have. _I couldn't let her die! I know he could go on and hurt other people before we catch up to him again, but these people were hurt __now__, right here. Was…was I not supposed to help them? _he'd wondered as he traipsed back down to the bound women.

That same unhappy inquiry ran through his mind again as he sat in the back of the cave, his eyes wet and raw. _I…I guess I shouldn't have stopped to help, at least I __think__ that's what he's going to say, but…how could I just walk by her? What if I hadn't gotten back in time, and she'd died? I…I don't know, Batman. I don't know what you want me to have done differently. I'm sorry…_

It was too late for apologies, he knew; after all, their target had run off to who knew where, and if he fled Gotham entirely they might never get another opportunity to bring him to justice. The more Dick thought about the choice he'd made earlier that evening, the more certain he was that his logic had been flawed, and the more self-flagellating he became. _He can't use me on missions like this if he can't trust me to make the right decisions without him, and…well, if he has to stick by me all the time to make sure I don't screw up, what good is it to even have me?_ His shoulders hunched forward. _It's useless. I'm…__I'm__..._

He couldn't quite finish the thought. Sighing, he climbed to his feet and prepared to head to the house. Before he could take the first step, however, he remembered the clothes scattered around him. _…Oh. Well…they don't really need washed, I guess. I mean…if he won't let me out anymore, what's the point? I don't want to waste Alfred's time, too…_ His gaze flitted to the garbage can, and he shuddered. _No. No, I can't do that, I…I just can't._ And idea struck suddenly. _That might work, though. At least he'd know that I already figured out that he can't use a Robin who screws up missions like I did tonight._ Chewing on his lip, he picked up the garments from the floor, folding each one carefully before placing it in a stack on the bench. When everything was together, he picked up the entire bundle and carried it back out to the main cave. There was one spot that Bruce was guaranteed to visit upon his return, and as he placed his uniform beside the stand where the cowl resided Dick felt a little sob escape his lips. _I don't want to give this back to you, but…it's better than having you take it away from me. _With his task completed, he walked slowly towards the stairs to do what he'd been ordered to do, glancing back more than a few times on his way. _…I'm sorry I didn't do good enough, Bruce. I wish…I wish I was as good as you are, but…I guess now I never will be._


	2. Chapter 2

As the boy had predicted, the first thing Batman did when he finally returned from the city was put away his cowl. Drawing near to the stand where it resided, he paused. _…Robin's clothing?_ One gauntleted hand came to rest on the stack. _But why…oh,_ he realized suddenly. An instant later he'd torn off his headgear, reverting to Bruce Wayne in a Batman suit. _Oh, Dicky, I'm sorry. I didn't think you'd take it this hard…I should have talked to you sooner, instead of just sending you to bed…shit._

He switched back into civilian garb quickly and double-timed up to the house. "Alfred," he inquired, sticking his head around into the kitchen. "…Did Dick stop by here on his way to bed?"

"Only to inform me that he was home and that you were still out, sir," the butler gave him a look that hovered somewhere between chastisement and curiosity. "He looked as if he'd been crying rather a lot, but I refrained from inquiring. I had the sense that the question would only upset him further."

"…Right." _Damn it,_ he cursed, leaving the doorway and heading upstairs to the corridor from which both his and the child's bedrooms let off. As his fingers wrapped around the correct doorknob, however, he froze. _I don't know how to broach this. You're clearly upset – more upset than you should be, to be honest – and I know something that I did or said must have exacerbated what you were already feeling about Standish getting away. _Swallowing hard, he let himself in despite his uncertainty. _Don't be awake. Maybe if you sleep on it you won't be so upset in the morning. I'll have more time to figure out what the hell to say, and we can talk…_

He was let down as soon as he came within view of the bed. _…Did you even sleep at __all__ since I left?_ the billionaire wondered as he spotted the boy curled up against the headboard, his face buried against his knees. _And you're crying,_ he sighed internally as he heard a tiny gasp. _Lovely. That makes this __so__ much easier…_ "Kiddo?" he breathed gently.

Dick jumped, having been so wrapped up in his failure that he hadn't heard the man enter. "I'm fine," he whimpered lamely, his eyes wide in the darkness.

"I think," Bruce answered as he moved towards him, "that I know you a little too well to fall for that."

_Crap. Double crap. _"I…I don't really want to talk about it, okay? I know I messed up, and I know…I know you need a partner who isn't going to make stupid mistakes and let the bad guys get away. So…okay?"

"Is that why you left your costume where you did?" There was no answer, just a silent, tear-streaked nod. "Okay. Then let's start there," he suggested, sitting down on the edge of the mattress. "…You didn't really think Batman would fire Robin for one mistake, did you?" _Please say no. I'm going to feel awful if you think your position is that tenuous._

"But…you'd have to!" burst out shakily. "I let Standish _escape_, Bruce! I could have had him if I'd gone after him right then, but instead I stopped to help that lady that he hurt. He…he could do what he did to her to so many other people now, and all because I made the wrong choice." He could see it now, the way things should have gone. _Batman would have gone after Standish, then come back to help the lady. Or he would have yelled at the other people to help her, and then gone after him, instead of spending all that time that I did getting her on the floor and making sure she was okay. Either way, he would have caught our target, and the hostage probably would have turned out okay, too. _

"You're not wrong," the billionaire opined slowly. "…But you're also not entirely right."

"See?" the boy threw up his hands. "There I go again."

Bruce bit back the laugh his sitcom-style delivery of the last four words inspired, knowing it was totally inappropriate given the gravity of the situation. "…No," he managed eventually, shaking his head. "Let me explain. You said that Standish will now be able to hurt other people before we – or someone else – can get to him. And that's correct; he might go on to kidnap tens or even hundreds more victims because we didn't catch him tonight. Unfortunately that's just a possibility that we have to live with. As for Batman _having_ to fire Robin because Standish now has that opportunity, though…that was wrong." He waited until the child had blinked at him a few times, his eyes filled with wary hope, before continuing. "When you decided to help the hurt woman instead of going straight after the bad guy, did you honestly believe you were making the right choice?"

"I…" he trailed off. _I don't know anymore. I…I should have gone after Standish, but…_

"I don't want to know how you feel about it _now_, chum, that's not my question. What I'm looking for is how you felt about it _then._"

"I…I thought she would die if I left her," he confessed. "I mean…she couldn't breathe, and all of the other women still seemed pretty shocked by everything and like they weren't really going to be able to help. Even if they'd gotten over the situation enough to try, their hands were tied behind their backs, so what were they going to do, kick her over? I didn't know where you were, but it felt so big down there that I didn't figure you could make it to us in time if I radioed you. And I thought…well, you found Standish once, and you could find him again, but if she died before I got back from catching him, she wouldn't get a second chance. I just…I thought I was doing the right thing, Bruce. I really did. But now…now I know better. I know what I should have done…what Batman would have done. But…" He paused, looking pensive. "I don't think I _could_ have chosen your way. I mean, unless Standish was going off to hurt or kill other people _right then_, like if he was going to detonate a bomb or something, I don't think I could have walked away from her. If I could go back and redo tonight, I…I think I'd still do the same thing. Knowing that…how can I be Robin? And how can you let me, or even want me to be?"

Listening, Bruce experienced an epiphany. He, too, had been framing what had happened that evening as a poorly made decision, a mistake in judgment on the part of his young partner. _But that isn't right,_ he realized now. _His judgment of the situation wasn't __wrong__, it just wasn't how I would have judged it. Why should that automatically make what he did incorrect? Obviously I would have preferred that Standish was caught, and had it been me in his shoes I'd have made that my first priority, but he's not me. He's always been more about helping the good people than punishing the bad ones. If I'd given chase, and the girl had died as a result, I wouldn't have been happy about it; if __he'd__ given chase, and the girl had died, he'd have felt it much more deeply than I would. I don't want him to have to bear something like that, the knowledge that someone, good or bad, died because he ran past them knowingly. That's a terrible burden, and while I'm sure it will come about eventually – it seems to for everyone in our line of work – I'd like him to be a fair bit older before then. It's bad enough that he has to live with the idea that the man who got away from him might hurt others now. _

"…Dick," he started, "you did _exactly_ what I wanted you to do."

"What, screw up so you had a reason to fire me?"

"I'm _not_ firing you," he stressed. _I don't think I could, to be honest, even if an actual transgression of principles had occurred. _"When you were standing there, deciding whether or not to go after Standish, you did the right thing."

"You don't really believe that," the boy insisted quietly. "You would have gone after him, I know you would have. But I could never do that, not in that exact situation. I'll never be as good as you are," his shoulders hunched forward protectively. "I'll never be able to make those kinds of decision the _right_ way. Your way. I just…can't."

"…You're right. Batman _would_ have run past the girl and after Standish. And maybe next time a situation like this occurs, you'll do what I would have done. But Dick, just because you did something different than I would have doesn't mean it was the wrong thing to do. Ninety-nine point nine percent of the time, there is no concrete 'right' and 'wrong' answer, just different points in a very big gray area. Obviously we try to stick as close to the 'good' end of that as we can, but sometimes two actions are so close together on the spectrum that there's no telling them apart in the moment that you have to make your decision. Those are the times when you have to go with your gut. Those are the times when you can't think actively about what someone else _might_ do, because you have to concentrate on what you _will_ do. Now, I'm not saying that you won't occasionally make a decision in the heat of the moment that you'll wish you'd made differently in hindsight, or even that you maybe _should_ have made differently, but I don't think that was what happened tonight. I did at first," he confessed, "but after hearing what you said about not believing that you could ever make a different choice in that same situation…I think it's just a difference in where those choices show up to you and I on the scale.

"And that's okay," he insisted. "In fact, it's good. I meant it when I said you did exactly what I wanted you to do, Dick; you made a decision based on your own belief in what was right and wrong, and you followed through with it. You saved ten innocent people tonight, one quite literally, and brought three men to justice. Standish got away, yes, and that wasn't what we would have preferred, it's true, but not even Batman _always_ gets the bad guy. I make plenty of mistakes, too, and even I'm…wrong…sometimes. That's a secret, by the way," he smiled, "so don't tell anyone I admitted to it. The point is, you did what you thought was best. When it comes to moral compasses, I have more trust in yours sometimes than I do in my own; so believe me when I say that you didn't do anything wrong. Just…differently."

"…I still feel like what you would have done might have been better, though."

"Well, then, think about it a little. Not _too_ much – don't let it eat you up – but enough to come to terms with it. Maybe you'll change your mind about what you would do if given a chance to repeat this evening; maybe you won't. Either way," he said firmly, "you'll still be my Robin. Got it?" Sixty pounds of acrobat landed on him, and he knew the message had gotten through. For a long moment he just held him, savoring their embrace. Then he pushed him back a short distance and locked their gazes. "You're still learning," he reminded, "and technically I should probably be mad at you for not calling in when you found Standish, but for tonight I'll just assume that you did what you thought was best at that moment, too. What I'm more concerned about is how certain you were that I'd drop you because of your decision. You need to know that that's not going to happen; I would never take Robin away from you because you did something differently than I would have. I might correct you, and if the transgression is extreme enough I might punish you, or put Robin on a temporary hiatus, but it would never be _permanent_, Dick. I know you would never do the sorts of things that would tempt me to banish Robin forever."

"So…you still think that I…that I can be good? Maybe…maybe even as good as Batman, someday?" he pled.

Placing his hands on the boy's shoulders, Bruce's voice became deadly serious. "You will be fierce. You will be a warrior." He paused, transitioning from a promise into a warning. "…And you will make work that you know in your heart is not as good as you want it to be. But that's how we learn. That's how we grow. And nobody – not even Batman – _ever_ stops doing those things. Okay?"

A broad, happy grin spilled across the child's face in the instant before he threw himself at his guardian once more. "…Got it."

**Author's Note: I hope you enjoyed this little piece! The Ira Glass quote came at the very end: "You will be fierce. You will be a warrior. And you will make work that you know in your heart is not as good as you want it to be." Many thanks to a friend on Facebook who posted that particular quote, which inspired this story.**


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